A million species at risk of extinction
Relentless pursuit of economic growth, twinned with the impact of climate change, has put an “unprecedented” one million species at risk of extinction, scientists said yesterday in a landmark UN report on the damage done by modern civilisation to the natural world.
Only a wide-ranging transformation of the global economic and financial system could pull ecosystems that are vital to the future of human communities worldwide back from the brink of collapse, concluded the report, which was endorsed by 130 countries, including the United States, Russia and China.
“The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed,” said Professor Josef Settele, who co-chaired the study, launched in Paris yesterday by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
“This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world.” Known as Global Assessment, the report found that up to one million of Earth’s estimated eight million plant, insect and animal species is at risk of extinction, many within decades.
The authors identified industrial farming and fishing as major drivers – with the current rate of species extinction tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the last 10 million years.
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